The difference between New Year's Day and Spring Festival is that the two are closely related.

What is the difference between New Year’s Day and the Spring Festival? New Year's Day and the Spring Festival are both traditional festivals in my country. What are the connections and differences between the two? Let us take a closer look at them.

The difference between New Year's Day and Spring Festival

1. New Year's Day 2018 is January 1st of the Gregorian calendar. New Year's Day is one of the traditional Chinese festivals, which falls on January 1st of the Gregorian calendar every year. A long time ago, the New Year's Day in ancient times was based on the lunar calendar, and the New Year's Day dates in different dynasties were also different. At that time, the Spring Festival and New Year's Day were on the same day.

2. The 2018 Spring Festival falls on February 16th of the Gregorian calendar. The traditional Spring Festival refers to the period from the La Festival on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, or the Kitchen God Festival on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month, to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. The specific Spring Festival generally refers to the first day of the Lunar New Year.

New Year's Day and Spring Festival related activities

Ancient New Year's Day

In ancient times, celebrations, ceremonies and prayers were held every New Year's Day. Because the Spring Festival and New Year's Day fell on the same day in ancient times, the activities on New Year's Day are similar to our current Spring Festival activities, such as offering sacrifices to gods and ancestors, dragon dancing, pasting Spring Festival couplets, setting off firecrackers, etc.

Modern New Year's Day

Although we have now separated New Year's Day from the Spring Festival, New Year's Day is still a traditional Chinese festival and the country has included it as a legal holiday. People across the country take a holiday to celebrate the New Year's Day. People will also take advantage of the New Year's Day holiday to reunite with their families or go traveling together.

Staying up all night before the Spring Festival

Before the Spring Festival, every household cleans the environment, and the joyful atmosphere of welcoming the New Year is everywhere. Staying up all night on New Year's Eve is one of the important customs. That is, the night before the Spring Festival, the whole family will gather together to have the New Year's Eve dinner, and then sit around the stove and chat, waiting for the moment to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new.

New Year's greetings on the Spring Festival

On the first day of the Spring Festival, which is also the first day of the Lunar New Year, people in every household will get up early, put on beautiful new clothes, dress neatly, go out to visit relatives and friends, greet each other, and wish each other good luck and prosperity in the new year.